Boundless Ambition: (Kyle Achilles, Book 5), page 39
Pierce pivoted in her direction. At fifty-four, he was twenty years older than anyone else at the table, although few would guess that by looking at him. Or postulate that he’d made countless millions off a petroleum-processing patent.
Pierce looked like the healthy outdoorsy recluse that he was. The kind of guy you could send into the woods with a knife and expect to come back with a bear. Always dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, he had intense green eyes, permanently tousled hair, and a stubble beard.
“You know a better way to cash in on Eos than selling it to Big Pharma?” Pierce asked.
Lisa smiled. “Much better. Please allow us to elaborate.”
“All right.” Pierce pushed back and put his feet up on the table. His boots were of the hiking kind, not cowboy and certainly not the polished leather loafers you’d expect to see descending the airstair of a private jet. She didn’t object. She could ignore the insignificant slight if it would allow her investor to feel like a leader while he was actually following.
“Big Pharma is powerful because it has the mechanisms required to market to the masses. Sales representatives. Physician relationships. Advertising resources. But why should we market to the masses?”
The feet came down and Pierce leaned forward. “You want to limit sales to the elite?”
Lisa ignored his question. “Suppose we priced Eos at a million dollars. There are about forty million millionaires in the world, many of whom have many millions. Taking into account their families and friends, we could probably get a hundred million customers worth a million dollars each quite easily. That would gross the company one hundred thousand billion dollars. That’s a one followed by fourteen zeroes, and it’s more than the eight of us could spend in a million years.”
Lisa was certain that Pierce had done the personal wealth math. With just one billion dollars in the bank, a person could spend a thousand an hour for a hundred years and still have a fortune left over.
“Go on,” Pierce said. “Get me to your conclusion.”
“When the numbers are this big, seeking to maximize financial return is foolish. What would be the point when we could never spend the money?”
Pierce gave an honest answer. “The point would be having a hell of a time trying.”
Lisa closed the trap. “Not really. The minute word gets out that immortality is for sale, anyone who has it will become the target of extreme animus and prejudice from everyone who doesn’t. We’d eventually be lynched in a populist revolution during which the formula would be stolen. Ultimately everybody would gain immortality—”
“Plunging the planet into David’s dystopian scenario. I get it,” Pierce said. “And I see the allure of finding another option. One of the reasons I live in Montana is that with so few people polluting you can still see the stars. But what’s the alternative? Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can keep the discovery secret. That won’t work. People will talk.”
“You’re right. People will talk. Even if we priced it at $100 million and only approached customers we knew could afford it, the news would still leak. It’s just too juicy to contain. Then there would be an investigation, and eventually our ivory tower would come tumbling down.”
“So you want to walk away from the money? Be satisfied with immortality alone?”
Lisa rose, walked around the table and sat on the corner at Pierce’s side. “Would that be so bad?”
She waited in that cozy pose through a full sixty seconds of silence while the rest of the room barely breathed. It was uncomfortable, but it did the trick. Pierce was nothing if not quick witted. “In essence, my $28 million investment will have bought me immortality.”
“And the contentment that comes from being one of the only people to have it. Never in the history of the world has there been a special status so elite.”
Another breathless pause ensued while Pierce ruminated and Lisa returned to her end of the table. He’d been about to walk away—to write off his $28 million. Now he was being offered an incalculably high return on his investment, albeit a non-financial one. “I could live with that,” he said with a wink. “Is that your proposal?”
Lisa placed both hands on the back of her chair and leaned in. “No.”
The chairman’s face darkened even as his eyes grew brighter, but he bit his tongue. He knew the kicker was coming.
“There’s a way for us to have our cake and eat it too. For us to become rich and immortal without getting lynched or overcrowding the planet.”
Pierce smiled, as much from the realization that he’d been steered full circle as from the anticipation of another titillating revelation. “Now you’re talking my language. What way is that?”
“Instead of selling Eos to a billion people, or even a million, we sell it to just one.”
Pierce nodded slowly, then faster. “One extremely wealthy person. But at what price?”
“A price that puts all the Immortals on the same financial footing. We ask for an even division of the fortune—ten ways around.”
“You mean nine,” Pierce corrected, nodding toward the empty chair.
All eyes turned toward Lisa as her stomach fluttered. “Nine,” she confirmed.
“And I suppose you already have the lucky man in mind?” Pierce pressed, now unable to repress his excitement.
“Woman, actually. My Stanford roommate married Jacques Eiffel, the late oil magnate.”
Links to Tim Tigner’s other thrillers
Also in the Kyle Achilles Series
. . . .
Also by Tim Tigner
. . . . .
Click cover to learn more
Never miss a new release. Sign up for Tim Tigner’s New Releases Newsletter at timtigner.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tim Tigner began his career in Soviet Counterintelligence with the U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. That was back in the Cold War days when, “We learned Russian so you didn't have to,” something he did at the Presidio of Monterey alongside Recon Marines and Navy SEALs.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tim switched from espionage to arbitrage. Armed with a Wharton MBA rather than a Colt M16, he moved to Moscow in the midst of Perestroika. There he led prominent multinational medical companies, worked with cosmonauts on the MIR Space Station (from Earth, alas), chaired the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, and helped write Russia’s first law on healthcare.
Moving to Brussels during the formation of the EU, Tim ran Europe, Middle East and Africa for a Johnson & Johnson company and traveled like a character in a Robert Ludlum novel. He eventually landed in Silicon Valley, where he launched new medical technologies as a startup CEO.
In his free time, Tim has climbed the peaks of Mount Olympus, hang-glided from the cliffs of Rio de Janeiro, and ballooned over Belgium. He earned scuba certification in Turkey, learned to ski in Slovenia, and ran the Serengeti with a Maasai warrior. He acted on stage in Portugal, taught negotiations in Germany, and chaired a healthcare conference in Holland. Tim studied psychology in France, radiology in England, and philosophy in Greece. He has enjoyed ballet at the Bolshoi, the opera on Lake Como, and the symphony in Vienna. He’s been a marathoner, paratrooper, triathlete, and yogi.
Intent on combining his creativity with his experience, Tim began writing thrillers in 1996 from an apartment overlooking Moscow’s Gorky Park. Decades later, his passion for creative writing continues to grow every day. His home office now overlooks a vineyard in Northern California, where he lives with his wife Elena and their two daughters.
Tim grew up in the Midwest, and graduated from Hanover College in 1990 with a BA in Philosophy and Mathematics. After military service and work as a financial analyst and foreign-exchange trader, he earned an MBA in Finance and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton and Lauder Schools on a full-ride scholarship.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing novels full of twists and turns is relatively easy. Doing so logically and coherently while maintaining a rapid pace is much tougher. Surprising readers without confusing them is the real art.
I draw on generous fans for guidance in achieving those goals, and for assistance in fighting my natural inclination toward typos. These are my friends, and I’m grateful to them all.
Editors: Suzanne S. Barnhill, Andrea Kerr, Judy Marksteiner and Peter Mathon.
Technical Consultant: Author and commercial pilot Ward Larson. Private pilot Michael Leibowitz.
Beta Readers: Errol Adler, Martin Baggs, Dave Berkowitz, Edward Bettigole, Doug Branscombe, Kay Brooks, Anna Bruns, Diane Bryant, Pat Carella, John Chaplin, Dianne Chiappari, Lars de Kock, Robert Enzenauer, Hugo Ernst, Rae Fellenberg, Geof Ferrell, Mike Galvin, Rob Gunn, Emily Hagman, Cliff Jordan, Robert Lawrence, Michael Leibowitz, Kerry Lohrman, Margaret Lovett, Debbie Malina, Michael Martin, Joe McKinely, Michael Picco, Lee Proost, Robert Rubinstayn, Chris Seelbach, Gwen Tigner, Robert Tigner, Steve Tigner, Wendy Trommer, Elizabeth Utley, Alan Vickery, Sandy Wallace, and Mike Wunderli.
Tim Tigner, Boundless Ambition: (Kyle Achilles, Book 5)
